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About Brent

Earned two bachelors degrees in three years so he could qualify to write gibberish about movies on the internet. Prefers to work in the afternoons so he can play Xbox Live all night without having to worry about glare on the screen and sleep in the next day. Often makes fun of nerds yet stood in line at midnight to buy the Star Wars blu-rays. Pretends to text at parties because he's terrible at talking to people.

I thought I’d begin the critique of Hollywood’s latest slap in the face to the American public with a little disclaimer: I have always been taught that bias should never take precedent over professionalism and that everything deserves a fair chance regardless of any preconceived notions that may work to cloud one’s judgement. And considering my historical penchant for thinking that found footage films can go to very special rungs of hell where every theater constantly loops Adam Sandler and Uwe Boll movies, I tried really, really hard to go into Paranormal Activity 4 with the straight-laced objectivism found within the pages of fine, respected journals all over the world.

It’s been almost a month since I’ve written a review and while I could try to come up with some heartfelt reason for it involving a dying grandpa or recent eviction the reality is that The Bourne Legacy and Premium Rush were both so blah that I couldn’t think of anything to say about them when I sat down at my computer. The Bourne Legacy departs from its predecessor by trying to involve the Umbrella Corporation and anyone without a Master’s degree in Political Science will be asleep in five minutes while Premium Rush is the longest 85 minutes in the history of action films and is about as entertaining to watch as stalking the BMX kids at your local skate park while taking a half-hour break to watch “celebrity” poker.

When I inevitably become emperor of the world within a few years there will be a strict code that I’ll have carved into the Washington Monument (which at that point will be re-dubbed the Christopher Nolan Monument) whose aim will be to make the world a better place. And right at the apex of said obelisk, just above the “Thou Shalt Not Pretend That Apple Products Are Better Than Others Just Because They’re More Expensive” will be the number one rule for my new, hopefully-not-dystopian empire: “Thou Shalt Not Remake Films Under 30 Years Old” and more importantly ones that nobody fucking wants.

Well, now that The Dark Knight Rises is ready to run its course and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay to see Total Recall and the five or six people on the planet who actually have any interest in The Bourne Legacy most likely can’t even read, I’ve had to scratch the bottom of the barrel for films to review, so this week I decided to check out Ted, which came out last month but has been keeping surprising pace in the top five in terms of box office returns. While I initially just chalked Ted‘s box office run up to typical American idiocy (I’m American so I can say it…incidentally, you should hear some of my white people jokes), everyone I’ve talked to has recommended it, though that can be taken with a grain of salt considering that most of the people I talk to I wouldn’t trust with anything sharper than a crayon. So, reluctantly, I checked out Ted in an empty theater on a Wednesday afternoon because being a writer gives me loads of free time to sit around doing nothing and I was pleasantly surprised as to just how ridiculously stupid it was.

Once upon a time there lived a little boy who loved Spider-Man so much that he refused to acknowledge the presence of any other super heroes. He loved Spider-Man because, like Peter Parker, he grew up poor with very few friends and never had any luck with the ladies because of his inherent nerdiness and an ability to flirt about on par with Terrell Owen’s ability to pay his child support. But then, somewhere around 2005, director Christopher Nolan released Batman Begins and what happened next, well in Washington D.C. they say, that little boy’s balls grew three sizes that day. And then with the epic waste of time that was Spider-Man 3 followed by the epic not waste of time that was The Dark Knight, the transition from whiny little boy to dark, demented man was complete and so far I’ve been all the better for it (with the exception of hating almost everyone).